


white noise filled my head

by indefinissable



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Dissociation, Episode Related, Food Issues, Gen, Hell Trauma, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Self-Harm, Shaving, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8829481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefinissable/pseuds/indefinissable
Summary: In the constant fluorescent glow of his isolated cell, Sam has no way to keep track of time. It passes strangely, warped and disorienting like the lazy buzzing of a housefly. He knows that this, in itself, is a technique intended to break him. He spends a lot of time sleeping. He hasn’t seen or heard Dean since they were brought in.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This coda to 12x08 was originally posted on tumblr, partially in response to an anonymous prompter who requested "panicky!sam with comforting!dean" following the midseason finale.

The first few days are fuzzy. When Sam tries to think back on them later, all he gets are hazy snippets of interrogations with words too fast to piece together into sentences. Sleep deprivation and lights so bright it hurts even when he closes his eyes. Revoked toilet privileges and the numbing cold of his cell. His wrists rubbed raw and bleeding from handcuffs he doesn’t remember struggling against.

After that first long, dizzy stretch of time, the interrogations stop and they leave him alone in the cell. Food is pushed through a heavy grate at the bottom of the cell door at irregular intervals. In the constant fluorescent glow of his isolated cell, Sam has no way to keep track of time. It passes strangely, warped and disorienting like the lazy buzzing of a housefly. He knows that this, in itself, is a technique intended to break him. He spends a lot of time sleeping. He hasn’t seen or heard Dean since they were brought in.

In his head, Lucifer says, _This isn’t over, Sam_. It starts in his left ear, then migrates to his right, like the tinnitus he sometimes gets when he fires his gun, worming its way into the core of his consciousness and plucking away there. Sam picks at the old scar on his palm until it bleeds freely, squeezes his fist tight so it drips slick between his fingers while Lucifer’s voice buzzes in and out like static.

He prays, once. Stands with his eyes closed and his face tipped up and calls to Castiel until his throat aches and his voice fades to a dry whisper. Discovers that if he stands in the middle of the floor and extends his arms, he can touch cold concrete on either side.

Sam is very thirsty, after that. They don’t bring water for what feels like a long time.

+

When he decides that trying to keep track of time is hopeless, Sam starts spending long stretches of time in his head. It’s something he got very good at in the Cage, whenever Lucifer tried out something particularly painful or cruel. All he has to do is close his eyes and take some deep breaths and he just kind of floats away from his body, drifts on a wave of numb and calm, completely empty.

Dean hates when he does it. It scares him when Sam goes cold and blank like that because Dean is always feeling _too much_ , even when he drinks to try and numb the edges of it. Lucifer never liked when Sam went inside his head either, and found creative ways of drawing him back out so he would moan and weep the way Lucifer wanted. In turn, Sam learned ways of locking himself away more securely, so deep that sometimes it took years before he found the way to claw himself back out.

Gradually, the spaces between the empty get fewer and farther between. Often Sam comes back to his cell briefly to find several cardboard trays of food gone cold and congealed and writhing with maggots. He can’t tell whether the maggots are real or in his head. Sam touches his face and discovers that a beard has grown in, scratchy against the papery skin of his hand. He is never hungry, but his lips are chapped and cracking and he is always parched. He wonders if they’re drugging the water and decides to stop drinking it.

Things go even more fragmented after that. Sam thinks he starts spending less time deeply buried in his own head and more time unconscious.

+

But Lucifer always comes back for Sam. Eventually, they come with voices loud enough to make him flinch, hands that grab and bruise his skin, stinging sharp like the paring knife Lucifer was always so fond of using on him. Sam can’t remember the last time he stood. His legs don’t work properly anymore, so they half-drag him back into the room with the lights that hurt his eyes. He is pushed into a chair and his hands are chained to the table in front of him. The fingers are the wrong colour and shape, thin like a skeleton’s, and they shake visibly.

The voices are talking again, and Sam wants to ask them to slow down because he doesn’t understand. When looks up, he sees Dean across the table from him. He has a beard, and he looks pale but otherwise unharmed. He is staring at Sam with pinched lines around his eyes and mouth that Sam recognizes immediately as _hurt_ and _anger_ , even if he can’t remember what those things mean right now. Dean speaks, and Sam can’t hear his voice over the loud white light, but his lips say _Sam_.

Sam nods his head jerkily, up-down-up-down, like a bobble-head taped to the dash of a speeding car. The motion is soothing, and Sam finds he can’t stop. Up-down, up-down, up-down, like a boat on the waves, or the gentle sway of a swinging body. Time is taken away from him again, under the white lights, while he nods and nods.

Distantly, unsurprised, Sam watches as Lucifer enters the room and all the men fold into to the ground like marionettes without strings. He is wearing Castiel again, and Sam distantly remembers how cold his hands burned in Sam’s chest, grasping for his soul with Castiel’s face warped and twisted almost beyond recognition. Lucifer comes close enough that Sam can feel his breath, reaches out to touch him. Sam flinches, and the skeleton hands on the table twist and claw at their restraints.

Sam goes away again before he can properly feel any of it. Sinks down, down, down, into the heaviest depths below the waves, sheltered from the light.

+

When he comes back again, it’s to the familiar rumble of an engine beneath him. His head is pillowed on Dean’s thigh. The world is rocking and jerking around him. The motion makes him nauseous. Sam tilts his head a little to the side and retches. Dean holds a paper bag in front of his face, but Sam doesn’t bring anything up. The bag is soaked with splotches of grease and the strong smell of fried food makes Sam gag and shiver violently. Dean holds his hair back off his forehead and his fingers scrape against Sam’s skin like sandpaper.

Sam wants to tell him to stop, only ever gets as far as _please, please, please,_ whispered on a loop like a broken record.

Dean says, _Shh. Shh._ The sound is crackling static, bringing the world in and out of focus.

Stop, he says again, and his own voice echoes back to him, first in his left ear, then migrating to his right: _Please please please._

Castiel’s voice breaks through the haze of light and noise. He says, _Dean. Stop._ Then the hands touching Sam are gone and the static noise is gone. Sam’s head rolls on his brother’s lap with every bump and sway of the car.

Eventually, someone pulls him up and out of the car, carries him across a room that smells like familiar engine grease and polish the garage down a flight of stairs and through a long hallway. He rolls his head against the fabric of Castiel’s overcoat, tries not to heave on it. Everything is bright and loud again and it all hurts.

Cas sets him down somewhere warmer and less hard than the low cot in his cell, more solid than the swaying backseat of the car. He pulls something soft over Sam’s body. Then he reaches to touch Sam’s forehead again.

Sam hears the low rumble of voices. Dean and Castiel. He hopes it’s real.

Castiel’s lips say _Sam_ and _sorry_.

+

Sam wakes up in his own room and he can feel that it is much later. Dean is asleep next to him in the cramped bed, snoring softly against Sam’s chest. His beard is gone and there’s some colour back in his cheeks.

Mary is sitting in a chair next to him, holding onto his hand. Her eyes open when he flexes his fingers experimentally and he recognizes her expression as a combination of surprise, uncertainty, and overwhelming relief. Feels them all, curled in his chest like a grenade, or some growing thing waiting to bloom.

She says, “Sam. Hey. Do you know where you are?”

Things aren’t so bright anymore, and Sam can hear her voice. It doesn’t hurt him at all. He says, “Is this real?”

Her fingers brush soft over his knuckles. “Yeah, sweetheart. It’s real.”

Dean stirs a little against his side.

Sam says, “Dean.” Hears the edge of desperation in his voice, feels it like a vise on his throat. “Dean.”

“Hey,” Dean says, alert, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and kneeling up. He gets a hand around the back of Sam’s neck. Firm, warm. “Hi. You back with us, Sammy? Can you tell me where we are?”

 _Yes_ , Sam says, but what comes out is: “Is this real? Is this real?”

“Sure is.” His thumb presses into the hollow at the back of Sam’s skull and Sam tethers himself to it. Stone number one. “Tell me where you are?”

Sam licks his lips, tries again. “Home. We’re home.”

+

Castiel tells him they were gone more than six weeks. Time is finally making sense to Sam again, but still he can’t decide if that number seems longer or much, much shorter than it felt. Dean says he kept track of the days on the stone wall of his cell using a loose screw from his bedframe, but Sam doesn’t understand how he knew when to make a new mark.

From what he’s been told, Sam knows that when they got him out he was suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition. He listens in a detached way while Dean goes on about human rights and international law, but he isn’t far gone enough anymore to avoid the sting of guilt at Dean’s kicked-puppy expression when he tells them he did it to himself.

“Mostly I wasn’t even there,” he explains. “When I was, I thought they were trying to poison me.”

Still, he doesn’t quite grasp the full extent of it until Dean prods him up and into the bathroom and he sees himself in the mirror. Sam knows he’s been bordering on _too-thin_ for a couple of years, but now he looks emaciated. His face is thin and gaunt, swallowed up by a patchy beard. The eyes gleam out dully, half-glazed like a corpse’s. Sam is normally always too warm, but when he removes his shirt he shivers despite the bunker’s comfortable temperature. Bones jut sharply out from his back, elbows and ribs. He wraps his skinny arms around his stomach.

“Oh,” he says. Then, just to be sure: “Is that me?”

“Yeah,” Dean says, turning the shower on and testing the temperature with the inside of his wrist. “Don’t worry about it. C’mere.”

Sam showers. He manages most of it on his own, but Dean has to remind him of all the steps because he keeps doing things like forgetting to take his socks off or rinse the shampoo out of his hair, or staring at the bar of soap in his hand for several long moments because he can’t quite remember what he’s supposed to do with it.

“Shit. Sorry,” he says each time Dean gently prods him to continue. Dean tells him it’s not important. It’ll come back, he says. Sam just has to give himself time.

By the time he’s clean Sam has finally warmed up, but as soon as Dean turns the water off he’s shivering again. Dean gets him dry and wrapped in a heavy robe, then sits him on the edge of the claw-foot tub so he can shave Sam’s face with a plastic disposable razor. His hand is firm on Sam’s shoulder, steady and grounding.

After, he draws Sam back up in front of the mirror. Sam breathes out a sigh of relief. The line of his jaw is too sharp and his cheeks are hollow and pale, but without the beard he at least recognizes himself.

“There,” Dean says. “Good as new.”

+

Later, Castiel brings him a steaming bowl of homemade chicken soup. He says, “I understand this meal is customary when humans are unwell.” Sam hears the uncertainty there, the helplessness and exhaustion.

He does his best, but only manages about half his bowl before he has to lie down and close his eyes and try very hard not to throw up. He can’t remember the last time he ate anything.

The space on the mattress by his head dips. Castiel’s fingers on his forehead are cool and hesitant. “Sam?”

Sam nods his silent permission, and the nausea immediately lessens. “Thanks,” he mumbles, turning his face into Castiel’s hip.

Cas sighs heavily, combs gently through Sam’s hair. “I wish I could do more.” The guilt and self-hatred resonate dully in Sam’s breast.

Sam says, “Cas. Don’t,” and fumbles for his hand. “I’m okay.”

For a long moment, Castiel strokes his hair in silence. Then he says, “I heard you,” whisper-soft. He’s so quiet, more vulnerable and cracked open with grief than Sam has ever heard him. “You prayed to me. I could hear you, but I couldn’t see or reach you. Sam. I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Sam says, gripping Castiel’s hand as tight as he can. He can’t quite find the words he needs, so he says it again. “Cas, no.”

Cas says, “Do you want some more soup?”

Sam shakes his head. His stomach still feels uneasy, like it might rebel at any moment. Everything is too quick and complex to piece together, like he’s moving through molasses.

Castiel’s forehead is still creased with concern and guilt. He says, “You look exhausted. You should try to sleep.”

He helps Sam climb under the covers, tucks the blankets around him and smooths out the wrinkles. Sam keeps hold of his hand, so he knows not to leave. Cas settles back against the headboard, a solid presence at Sam’s side.

Sam is halfway to sleep when it hits him. “Cas.”

“Hm?”

“You found us.” Sam struggles with the words even as they stumble haltingly past his tongue. “I prayed, and you found me. That’s… important. More than other things.”

He worries maybe he isn’t making sense, or that he’s said the wrong thing, but the answering rumble of Castiel’s voice is grateful. “Thank you, Sam.”

The familiar sound of his breathing soothes Sam to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on tumblr [@withthedemonblood](http://www.withthedemonblood.tumblr.com).


End file.
